UAE halts trade with Iran after accusing Tehran of firing ballistic missiles

US President Donald Trump threatened earlier this week to attack Oman if it interferes with US efforts in the Strait of Hormuz.

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Monday, as Tehran said that talks with Muscat over the vital waterway were ongoing.

Oman, a historic US ally, has attempted to act as a mediator between the US and Iran both before and during the conflict, notably hosting nuclear negotiations between Tehran and Washington before the war broke out in February.

The day before the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said that Iran had agreed not to stockpile enriched uranium, meaning it would never have enough material to create a nuclear weapon if it reached a deal with the US.

The next day, after the US-Israeli strikes, Albusaidi said he was “dismayed” that “active and serious negotiations” between the US and Iran had “yet again been undermined.”

In March, Albusaidi called the war with Iran the Trump administration’s “greatest miscalculation.” Days later, he posted on X: “Whatever your view of Iran, this war is not of their making.”

In the months since, Oman has worked with Iran to draft protocols for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

In May, Trump threatened Oman for the first time, saying that the country “will behave just like everybody else, or we’ll have to blow ‘em up.”

Weeks later, a senior US administration official told reporters that Oman was “duplicitous” during negotiating efforts with Iran — so they “threw them out” of the mediation role.

CNN’s Alejandra Jaramillo, Nadeen Ebrahim, Mostafa Salem, Haley Britzky, Jennifer Hansler, Antoinette Radford, Jessie Yeung, Sarah El Sirgany, Billy Stockwell, Mohammed Tawfeeq and Aaron Blake contributed to this reporting.